


if you just play along (i promise we'll be fine)

by arwainian



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 08:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16426337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arwainian/pseuds/arwainian
Summary: “I… may have something you could do,” Akira says to her. “How willing are you to bend important rules like—“ he hisses a breath, “the law?”Makoto gapes at him.“Listen, I’m sure you mean well, but my sister is a prosecutor. And I don’t want anything to do with whatever drugs you’re trying to get me to sell.”Makoto's life has always been about getting better grades, being the best in her class, getting into a top college. Unemployed and struggling under the weight of student loans, Makoto finds other ways to occupy herself in adulthood. Like getaway driving, becoming an infamous highly-wanted art thief, and stammering her way through conversation with a gorgeous foreign woman.





	if you just play along (i promise we'll be fine)

**Author's Note:**

> this is the beginning of the f/f longfic we all deserve in this fandom  
> despite this supposedly being a makoann fic in the first chapter this um one whole mention of ann, sorry about that she'll get her time to shine soon enough  
> thank you so much to nell for beta-reading for me  
> i'm on tumblr as @butchmakoto  
> anyway welcome to my first attempt at multipchapter fanfic, i have no update schedule but come along on this ride with me  
> title is from rules don't stop me by we are scientists

Makoto’s alarm jerks her suddenly out of dreamless sleep. She immediately feels tired again. God, why does she even set an alarm. It’s not like she has anywhere to be. Or that Sae is ever still home by the time Makoto bothers to set it.

It takes half an hour for Makoto to actually get out from under the covers. It takes another half hour for her to check her email and voicemail in the only half committed hope that the interviews she did over the weekend actually resulted in being hired. They did not.

After that she shuffles out of her room to the too quiet apartment proper. She remembers Sae used to leave notes on the counter if she left before Makoto woke up. That was a while before college, though. Makoto hasn’t seen a lime green sticky note with a black sharpie apology in years. She shakes off the bout of nostalgia and pours herself a bowl of cereal. She isn’t some child that needs her sister’s constant attention. With that thought, she finishes her cereal, and does her dishes, and goes back on her laptop to look for more job opportunities. She is immediately disappointed by the utter lack of such.

She looks at her phone absentmindedly and thinks she should text Eiko back. She should keep in contact with the one friend she actually made in college that seemed determined to talk to her.

She stands up, suddenly restless. She paces the hallway a few times before _something_ she can do occurs to her, and she walks into her room. Standing in the center of her room she breathes deeply, and begins a kata. Then she goes through a few more since she hasn’t gone to anything aikido related in a year, longer than she’d realized. So she runs through a few kata, or well, a few halves of kata because there’s only so much she can do with an aikido kata without a partner. It’s not as satisfying, but it works.

She sinks an hour into running the kata over and over again, ironing out mistakes made from being out of practice until she’s smooth and rehearsed and as she should. Then she sinks a few more hours down a YouTube rabbit hole. An hour in, just as she’s about to make herself lunch, Makoto remembers she’s alone and indulges in the small thrill of listening without her earbuds.

After lunch, she actually gets dressed and continues to laze around the apartment. Around three in the afternoon she wanders down to the lobby of their apartment building to grab the mail from their box. She catches a glimpse of her dad’s old motorcycle parked on the curb outside, and her chest tightens thinking about him. She never rides it, even though she went through all the trouble of getting a license.

She shakes off the heaviness of it like she’d gotten a leaf stuck in her hair and sorts through the mail on her way back up to the apartment. It’s just bills for student loans and utilities and the like, which means it all goes to Sae. She barely lets Makoto touch anything financial these days, who knows why. She leaves them on the counter, despite her itch to just open them now.

A few hours later, while she’s putting on her jacket, she gets a text from Sae.

_Don’t wait to have dinner for me,_ it reads. Makoto sighs, though she doesn’t know why she’s disappointed. Sae’s home late more often now than she’s on time, and Makoto was about to go out anyway. Maybe she’d be less bothered if she and Sae actually talked when they were conscious in the same room at the same time. It doesn’t matter. Makoto slips on her shoes and leaves for that out-of-the-way coffee shop that Sae told her about once. It’d be the perfect opportunity to take the motorcycle out. She takes the metro instead.

The sounds of people surround her on the metro, and follow her into the narrow side streets to the miraculously still under operation store and into it’s warm homey interior. The news plays at a low volume from an old TV in the corner. An old couple sits in comfortable silence in one of the booths. Makoto sits at the counter and orders the only real food on the menu, curry.

Halfway into her meal a book of crossword puzzles slides into her line of sight. She stares at it for a second and then follows the hand that moved it towards her up to the face of the only person that works there besides the gruff looking man doing all the cooking.

“You look like you need something to do,” he says in a way that makes it seem like he would know the answer to any question she could possible ask. She thanks him and finishes her meal deliberating over 14 across.

“I’ll save this one for you,” the employee says as she gets up to leave and pushes the crossword book back to him.

“You really don’t have to,” she says.

“I insist!” he calls after her in a slightly silly voice that might be a half-assed exaggeration of the way people usually say that phrase.

The train ride back is quieter than the one there, but the proximity to people is still a sharp contrast to the rest of her day. Sae still isn’t home when Makoto steps back into the apartment. Makoto doesn’t sigh this time. She takes a long bath and get ready to go to bed because there’s just not much else to do.

She doesn’t go to sleep right away. She skims recent news articles from the day in the dark and the not-body-warm-yet comfort of her bed. The only new article about those serial burglaries is one about how there’s no new news on them. It’s a shame, she’s been finding that case interesting. Not that she _wants_ there to be more crime. It’s just a fascinating case.

As she finally drifts off, moments before Sae comes home, she vaguely remembers that she meant to text Eiko today. Then she’s asleep.

* * *

 

It’s her usual routine. She wakes up after Sae leaves, spends her day doing effectively nothing, and when Sae’s not home for dinner, she eats at that Leblanc place. Sometimes she does crossword puzzles while she eats there. Sometimes she even has conversations with the guy behind the counter.

“You should really get a hobby,” Akira— the guy’s name is Akira— tells her in his advice-giving voice.

“Maybe,” Makoto says to him, and then doesn’t.

The cycle of wasted days and unemployment continues. Doomed job interviews and actual conversations with Sae break up the monotony but not enough for Makoto to stop wishing she was back in college, studying for finals so desperately that she felt like her brain was melting.

Bills continue to be the only thing to be found in the mailbox, and if Makoto can’t keep her bored curiosity in check, Sae snatches the envelopes out of her hands and keeps it in check for her. Really, if Sae was so upset with Makoto doing nothing around the house all day, she could at least _try_ to let Makoto help with adulting. As is, Makoto’s practically the financial version of dead weight, and given how Sae mutters about money being tight, that makes everything worse. She really needs a job.

“I… may have something you could do,” Akira says to her in response to a rant she hadn’t even realized was out loud. “How willing are you to bend important rules like—“ he hisses a breath, “the law?”

Makoto gapes at him.

“Listen, I’m sure you mean well—“ she isn’t sure actually; who the hell does this guy think he is,  “—but my sister is a prosecutor. And I don’t want anything to do with whatever drugs you’re trying to get me to sell.”

Akira laughs.

“That’s not quite what I was getting at. But I take your point.” He shrugs loosely. “It was only a suggestion.”

The subject changes. Makoto finishes her food just around the time to close up shop. The gruff man has already left. Akira usually calls him “Boss”, but the times he says “Dad” instead make Makoto’s heart twist around the tender word.

A young athletic man with bleached hair walks in the door just as Makoto leaves. It’s not surprising, she’s seen him and a few others walk in at closing to talk to Akira before. Akira waves goodbye to her and hugs the man in a way that radiates camaraderie as deep trust. She catches the beginning of the man’s excited voice before the door shuts and she walks out of earshot. He says something about the MOT and tonight and “everyone’s ready.”

That night Sae walks in the door with a mysterious file that she tosses onto the table. It’s only by an act of God that it doesn’t fall off the table and spill its contents over the floor when its momentum carries it to the edge.

“What’s that?” Makoto asks.

“Those ‘Phantom Thieves’ left another warning note today ,” Sae says, like just having to form those particular words into that particular sentence is an annoyance she’d rather do without. “The police wanted me to start putting together my prosecution. They’re optimistic about catching them in the act this time.”

“Ah,” she says.

“They’re trying to hold back information but it’ll hit the news cycle by tomorrow night whether they’re caught or not.” Sae sounds just as tired-bored as Makoto feels. The conversation ends there, but before she goes to bed Makoto pokes around the Internet for interesting articles that she might have missed. She finds one titled “The Phantom Thieves Still at Large” and on a whim she prints it out to keep.

She wakes up slow the next morning. Despite having literally nothing in her whole life to do, the gentle wake-up fills her with motivation. She’s up at 9:30, and before 11:00, she’s revised her resume, run through all the aikido she can remember, cleaned the bathroom, and reorganized her bookshelf. At 11:01 A.M. Makoto runs out of things to do and sits at the dining table watching the first thirty second of several YouTube videos before deciding none of them are worth her _incredibly precious and limited time_. She groans into the oppressive isolate silence. Unemployment has never appealed to her less.

She needs to hear somebody else’s voice. She could take a walk, but she’d feel so silly taking a walk just to hear other people having actual lives. Instead she sinks into the couch and turns on the news. Sae’s been talking about selling the TV to help with student debt, she might as well enjoy it while it’s around. The news anchor speaking helps, but she still wants to _do_ something. All of the books she owns are dry nonfiction so that’s out. Goofing off online has lost its appeal. An hour in, just when Makoto starts to consider taking a nap to just kill some time, her gaze catches on the papers left out on the coffee table.

She sits up and looks closer, and she realizes Sae must have forgotten to put her things away because sitting spread out on the coffee table is the file she’d brought home the night before and stacked messily on the far corner is their finances. Boredom induced curiosity overwhelms her higher thinking and before she can consider it she already have the Phantom Thieves file in her hands. It’s the most engaging thing she’s read in weeks.

In the file is everything the police know about the thefts. Copies and analysis of their infamous warning notes make up a majority of the file. The language of those notes has gotten more sophisticated and dramatic as they’ve gone, but all that can be discerned from that is that the calling cards were a collaboration. They also started small, small being the first theft attributed to them was the entire personal trophy collection of a former Olympian. They didn’t stay small for long. Apparently the most recent note had been sent to the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art.

Makoto loses track of time reading and rereading it all. She sinks hours into analyzing the phrasing on the cards and the fleeting blurred images captured just before security feeds cut out and the potential collaboration of the thieves and a group of hackers. She looks up the fan website the files mentioned. It’s mostly theories about how they pull everything off, though there are scattered messages of support and suggestions for their next big score.

The hours she spends pouring over are filled with the exact kind of mental stimulation she’s been craving. She isn’t even bothered when Sae texts that she won’t be home. Her mind is too busy buzzing around the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Phantom Thieves must have gone there last night. What did they take? Or try to take. Were they really caught in the act? Why does she feel like she knows something?

There’s an itch in her brain, a connection she knows is there but can’t quite make. She’s sure there’s something missing from the files that she _knows_ deep in her bones, and if she can just remember what it is everything will fall into place.

She does, eventually, get frustrated with reaching for that missing piece, and when she does she carefully puts the file back on the coffee table in the exact position she found it. Then her eyes fall on the finances, and the fraction of boredom curiosity still left joins forces with a desire to be useful. Wouldn’t it be nice if she could look through and see what she could budget? Wouldn’t it be a nice surprise for Sae to show she’d squeezed a bit more money into existence while she was at work?

So, with the news still playing in the background, she looks. And keeps looking. And flips through the bills and looks at Sae’s income and does the math in her head. And then she redoes the math, and then she reminds herself of all the reasons Sae’s income should be correct because she’s still definitely a high profile prosecutor. Makoto redoes the math again, writing out every calculation, and sure enough, her student loans, and Sae’s student loans, and rent, and utilities, and food, and how much Makoto knows Sae puts into savings all together don’t— they shouldn’t be worried about money. They should have enough to be comfortable even though Makoto’s added debt without adding an extra salary.

Sae writes everything down. Makoto knows this, so she sifts through the papers for anything that Sae might have noted as different than stated, or some explanation. She does. Stuck between two stabled papers, Makoto finds a crumpled piece of paper torn from a legal pad. It’s covered in probabilities, notes, strategies. And amounts of money ‘budgeted’ for it all. Looking at this one forgotten papers, small things that Makoto had never thought about all suddenly flood her memory: the late nights, the money problems, the complete and utter lack of communication, that lottery ticket Sae bought once.

“Oh,” Makoto says to the air. The flatness of her voice in her own ear rings dissonant with the boiling in her veins. She gets it all now. Sure, Sae’s the one with the gambling problem but _she’s_ the financial burden, the one putting them in debt. She slams the papers down on the coffee table before she rips them.

Her fists clench involuntarily, knuckles white. Her real calling must be boxing; she’s about to put a whole through the goddamn wall.

She screams. She screams very long and loud. The she burns holes into the papers with her eyes and sits down on the couch. Her back is straight, her jaw tight, and she begins to collect herself. She’s going to tear Sae a new one when she gets home, and she’s going to look collected and mature when she does. Every molecule of her being vibrates with rage.

The news anchor’s voice cuts through her rage-blind stupor.

“The Phantom Thieves struck again last night,” Makoto attention snaps to the TV. “After delivering a signature calling card to the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art, the Phantom Thieves evaded arrest yet again and stole multiple as-of-now undisclosed pieces from the newest collection. Neither the police not the MOT have yet to release an official statement—”

“The MOT,” Makoto whispers. The one _final_ piece of the big puzzle of her life— the _MOT—_  slides into place. She’s on her feet while everything is still sliding into place, rushing to grab the printed article from her room. She looks at the clock. It’s late, Leblanc’s closing soon.

The flies down the flights of stairs. Her feet barely touch each step and her momentum nearly carried her into a wall as she scrambles out of the building. She stumbles onto the sidewalk. She almost laughs when she catches herself on the motorcycle. Why not.

She’s hurtling down streets with reckless manic abandon on her dad’s old motorcycle. She also doesn’t hit a single person in the tiny streets of Yongen Jaya. Parking in front of Leblanc and pushing past Akira just before he closes the door is a blur.

The inside is the much like it always is at closing, quiet and warm. The news plays from the tiny old TV, it’s still the same story that drove her here. She must look a mess, stumbling over to the booth with loud-voice bleached-hair man and company.

She slams the one page of the article she’d kept the whole trip and her fist down on the table. Everyone stares at her, their cheerful, triumphant chatter silenced. Gentle hands with chipped hot pink nail polish reach out tentatively and Makoto pulls her hand away from the paper. She can’t look away as the hands smooth out the paper. _Phantom Thieves Still at Large_ , it reads in big bold letters, under it a dramatic picture of an empty display case.

She’s out of breath, chest heaving, hair in her face. Her voice will sound raspy from her screaming earlier. What if she’s wrong. She’s jumped to so many conclusions tonight and each one has been wilder than the last. She’ll look so silly if she’s wrong.

A woman with spun gold hair and freckle dusted cheeks and those painted-pink nails glances up from the paper to Makoto’s face. She opens her mouth to say something. Makoto beats her to breaking the silence.

“You’re the Phantom Thieves.”

Makoto sways around to face Akira, suddenly. The rest of her accusation, her justification for this insane idea, dies on her tongue as she points shakily at him. Her breathing is still coming in gasps. She needs to say something, _anything_.

“Is that job offer still open?”


End file.
